Thus Thorpe and the Indian unexpectedly found themselves in the
possession of luxury. The outfit had not meant much to Wallace
Carpenter, for he had bought it in the city, where such things are
abundant and excite no remark; but to the woodsman each article
possessed a separate and particular value. The tent, an iron
kettle, a side of bacon, oatmeal, tea, matches, sugar, some canned
goods, a box of hard-tack,--these, in the woods, represented wealth.
Wallace's rifle chambered the .38 Winchester cartridge, which was
unfortunate, for Thorpe's .44 had barely a magazineful left.

The two men settled again into their customary ways of life. Things
went much as before, except that the flies and mosquitoes became
thick. To men as hardened as Thorpe and the Indian, these pests
were not as formidable as they would have been to anyone directly
from the city, but they were sufficiently annoying. Thorpe's old
tin pail was pressed into service as a smudge-kettle. Every evening
about dusk, when the insects first began to emerge from the dark
swamps, Charley would build a tiny smoky fire in the bottom of
the pail, feeding it with peat, damp moss, punk maple, and other
inflammable smoky fuel. This censer swung twice or thrice about the
tent, effectually cleared it. Besides, both men early established on
their cheeks an invulnerable glaze of a decoction of pine tar, oil,
and a pungent herb. Towards the close of July, however, the insects
began sensibly to diminish, both in numbers and persistency.

Up to the present Thorpe had enjoyed a clear field. Now two men
came down from above and established a temporary camp in the woods
half a mile below the dam. Thorpe soon satisfied himself that they
were picking out a route for the logging road. Plenty which could
be cut and travoyed directly to the banking ground lay exactly
along the bank of the stream; but every logger possessed of a tract
of timber tries each year to get in some that is easy to handle and
some that is difficult. Thus the average of expense is maintained.

The two men, of course, did not bother themselves with the timber
to be travoyed, but gave their entire attention to that lying
further back. Thorpe was enabled thus to avoid them entirely. He
simply transferred his estimating to the forest by the stream. Once
he met one of the men; but was fortunately in a country that lent
itself to his pose of hunter. The other he did not see at all.

But one day he heard him. The two up-river men were following
carefully but noisily the bed of a little creek. Thorpe happened to
be on the side-hill, so he seated himself quietly until they should
have moved on down. One of the men shouted to the other, who,
crashing through a thicket, did not hear. "Ho-o-o! Dyer!" the
first repeated. "Here's that infernal comer; over here!"

Thorpe recognized the voice instantly as that of Radway's scaler.
His hand crisped in a gesture of disgust. The man had always been
obnoxious to him.

Two days later he stumbled on their camp. He paused in wonder at
what he saw.

The packs lay open, their contents scattered in every direction.
The fire had been hastily extinguished with a bucket of water,
and a frying pan lay where it had been overturned. If the thing
had been possible, Thorpe would have guessed at a hasty and
unpremeditated flight.

He was about to withdraw carefully lest he be discovered, when
he was startled by a touch on his elbow. It was Injin Charley.

"Dey look for somethin'," said he, making his hand revolve as
though rummaging, and indicating the packs.

"I t'ink dey see you in de woods," he concluded. "Dey go camp
gettum boss. Boss he gone on river trail two t'ree hour."

"You're right, Charley," replied Thorpe, who had been drawing his
own conclusions. "One of them knows me. They've been looking in
their packs for their note-books with the descriptions of these
sections in them. Then they piled out for the boss. If I know
anything at all, the boss'll make tracks for Detroit."

There, with incredible deftness, he packed together about twelve
pounds of the jerked venison and a pair of blankets, thrust Thorpe's
waterproof match safe in his pocket, and turned eagerly to the
young man.

Thorpe hastily unearthed his "descriptions" and wrapped them up.
The Indian, in silence, rearranged the displaced articles in such a
manner as to relieve the camp of its abandoned air.

It was nearly sundown. Without a word the two men struck off into
the forest, the Indian in the lead. Their course was southeast, but
Thorpe asked no questions. He followed blindly. Soon he found that
if he did even that adequately, he would have little attention left
for anything else. The Indian walked with long, swift strides, his
knees always slightly bent, even at the finish of the step, his back
hollowed, his shoulders and head thrust forward. His gait had a
queer sag in it, up and down in a long curve from one rise to the
other. After a time Thorpe became fascinated in watching before him
this easy, untiring lope, hour after hour, without the variation of
a second's fraction in speed nor an inch in length. It was as though
the Indian were made of steel springs. He never appeared to hurry;
but neither did he ever rest.

At first Thorpe followed him with comparative ease, but at the end
of three hours he was compelled to put forth decided efforts to
keep pace. His walking was no longer mechanical, but conscious.
When it becomes so, a man soon tires. Thorpe resented the
inequalities, the stones, the roots, the patches of soft ground
which lay in his way. He felt dully that they were not fair. He
could negotiate the distance; but anything else was a gratuitous
insult.

Then suddenly he gained his second wind. He felt better and stronger
and moved freer. For second wind is only to a very small degree a
question of the breathing power. It is rather the response of the
vital forces to a will that refuses to heed their first grumbling
protests. Like dogs by the fire they do their utmost to convince
their master that the limit of freshness is reached; but at last,
under the whip, spring to their work.

At midnight Injin Charley called a halt. He spread his blanket;
leaned on one elbow long enough to eat strip of dried meat, and fell
asleep. Thorpe imitated his example. Three hours later the Indian
roused his companion, and the two set out again.

Thorpe had walked a leisurely ten days through the woods far to
the north. In that journey he had encountered many difficulties.
Sometimes he had been tangled for hours at a time in a dense and
almost impenetrable thicket. Again he had spent a half day in
crossing a treacherous swamp. Or there had interposed in his trail
abattises of down timber a quarter of a mile wide over which it had
been necessary to pick a precarious way eight or ten feet from the
ground.

This journey was in comparison easy. Most of the time the travellers
walked along high beech ridges or through the hardwood forests.
Occasionally they were forced to pass into the lowlands, but always
little saving spits of highland reaching out towards each other
abridged the necessary wallowing. Twice they swam rivers.

At first Thorpe thought this was because the country was more open;
but as he gave better attention to their route, he learned to
ascribe it entirely to the skill of his companion. The Indian
seemed by a species of instinct to select the most practicable
routes. He seemed to know how the land ought to lie, so that he was
never deceived by appearances into entering a cul de sac. His beech
ridges always led to other beech ridges; his hardwood never petered
out into the terrible black swamps. Sometimes Thorpe became sensible
that they had commenced a long detour; but it was never an abrupt
detour, unforeseen and blind.

From three o'clock until eight they walked continually without a
pause, without an instant's breathing spell. Then they rested a
half hour, ate a little venison, and smoked a pipe.

An hour after noon they repeated the rest. Thorpe rose with a
certain physical reluctance. The Indian seemed as fresh--or as
tired--as when he started. At sunset they took an hour. Then
forward again by the dim intermittent light of the moon and stars
through the ghostly haunted forest, until Thorpe thought he would
drop with weariness, and was mentally incapable of contemplating
more than a hundred steps in advance.

"When I get to that square patch of light, I'll quit," he would
say to himself, and struggle painfully the required twenty rods.

"No, I won't quit here," he would continue, "I'll make it that
birch. Then I'll lie down and die."

And so on. To the actual physical exhaustion of Thorpe's muscles
was added that immense mental weariness which uncertainty of the
time and distance inflicts on a man. The journey might last a week,
for all he knew. In the presence of an emergency these men of action
had actually not exchanged a dozen words. The Indian led; Thorpe
followed.

When the halt was called, Thorpe fell into his blanket too weary
even to eat. Next morning sharp, shooting pains, like the stabs
of swords, ran through his groin.

When the sun was an hour high the travellers suddenly ran into a
trail, which as suddenly dived into a spruce thicket. On the other
side of it Thorpe unexpectedly found himself in an extensive
clearing, dotted with the blackened stumps of pines. Athwart the
distance he could perceive the wide blue horizon of Lake Michigan.
He had crossed the Upper Peninsula on foot!

"Boat come by to-day," said Injin Charley, indicating the tall stacks
of a mill. "Him no stop. You mak' him stop take you with him.
You get train Mackinaw City tonight. Dose men, dey on dat train."

Thorpe calculated rapidly. The enemy would require, even with their
teams, a day to cover the thirty miles to the fishing village of
Munising, whence the stage ran each morning to Seney, the present
terminal of the South Shore Railroad. He, Thorpe, on foot and three
hours behind, could never have caught the stage. But from Seney
only one train a day was despatched to connect at Mackinaw City with
the Michigan Central, and on that one train, due to leave this very
morning, the up-river man was just about pulling out. He would arrive
at Mackinaw City at four o'clock of the afternoon, where he would be
forced to wait until eight in the evening. By catching a boat at the
mill to which Injin Charley had led him, Thorpe could still make the
same train. Thus the start in the race for Detroit's Land Office
would be fair.

"All right," he cried, all his energy returning to him. "Here
goes! We'll beat him out yet!"

"You come back?" inquired the Indian, peering with a certain anxiety
into his companion's eyes.

"Oh, Charley!" shouted Thorpe in surprise. "Come on and get a square
meal, anyway."

But the Indian was already on his way back to the distant
Ossawinamakee.

Thorpe hesitated in two minds whether to follow and attempt further
persuasion, for he felt keenly the interest the other had displayed.
Then he saw, over the headland to the east, a dense trail of black
smoke. He set off on a stumbling run towards the mill.